I don't know if the AI was limited or scripted for this event but I will give my feedback on it nonetheless.

I played 4 games now, 1 on casual, 1 on normal, 2 on hard.

The AI feels weird, it is such a pushover, even on hard. They made it way too easy to be conquered and was always limping behind me tech/culture wise.

Even the AI on the other continent which is not affected by my early rushes or skirmishes is limping behind.

It is very easy to "block in"/rush all the other AI players who spawn with you on the same continent while still in the Neolithic Era.

And in the Neolithic Era the AI won't advance into the next Era before you which gives you even more time to fuck with them (yes I know that that was probably OpenDev scripted, but still).

To counter this, there could be either random respawns if your last tribe gets killed.

I don't think they 'made it easy'.  Rather, it's still not done yet.  Unfortunately like most 4x games (and past Amplitude games), the AI will only be 'kind of acceptable' on release, and improve to 'adequate' after post release patches.

The only good 4x AI I've ever come across has been in the Civ 5 mod Vox Populi, but that's because the team working on it have spent the last 5 or 6 years improving it.  It's just too damn hard to program an AI for games which are this complicated.

That said, I hope it gets much better by april.